Creating a Campaign Part 5: Religion

Why yes, I am an eldritch abomination posing as a god!

Hello there, my lovelies,

And welcome back to part 6 of this series, where I discuss what I do when I create a new setting or campaign. In a nutshell, I try to create an immersive setting by strategically placing flavourful concepts and terse descriptions, rather than diving into massive exposition dumps.  By sprinkling a few evocative statements here and there, it fires up the player’s imagination, and they weave these ideas into their own unique mental map of your world.

If you want to read the previous entries, please use the links below:

Creating a Campaign Part 1: Creating Concepts
Creating a Campaign Part 2: Character Creation
Creating a Campaign Part 3: Shopping!
Creating a Campaign Part 4: Artefacts

Today I am going to go over everyone’s favourite subject (other than politics), religion. I will be honest, I am not sure I have cracked the code of making in-game religions that feel real. I think very few TTRPGs or even computer games manage to achieve this; they often feel like they have fallen into a contextual uncanny valley. They look and sound like a real religion, but somehow lack. Perhaps this is just a limitation of the medium. In the real world, religion is so deeply interlaced with culture that the society is very much a product of its religious traditions as well as its civic values.

There are exceptions to this, and I will discuss one in particular later. The majority of this post will describe types of religion that fit well in a TTRPG, and the considerations that might make them feel more real.

Tea-Set’s Note

Obviously, this is a HUGE topic, perhaps worthy of its own series of posts.  So consider the following in this post as an overview, rather than a deep dive.

Aniamism

Animism is one of the earliest forms of religious belief. For the animist, the world is full of spirits found in every object, environment and location.  These spirits have power and agency to change the world around them, just like us.  This can make them very dangerous if angered. So animists seek good relationships with the environment and provide rituals and offerings to the spirits.

A good example of a modern animist religion is the Shinto religion of Japan, which venerates spirits (kami) of the land. It is full of ritual and shrines that attempt to bring peace and harmony to the environment.

Polythesim

Polytheistic religions are the most common form of religion in TTRPGs.  The advantage is that it creates instant diversity in the setting and gives your players more options when building their character.

One thing I have noticed is that these gods tend to be iconic characters, meaning they do not change; they are eternal personifications of their domains. In the real world, gods in pantheons tend to have strong interpersonal connections. They are either related, lovers, or even enemies. This makes them deeply flawed characters and painfully human in their behaviour. The best example of this is Zeus and Hera.  Zeus gets horny, turns himself into a sexy animal or object, and then seduces a young fair maiden. Rather than address the issues in their marriage, his wife, Hera, takes her anger out on these poor women and curses them in various ways.  Creating a set of myths for your pantheon would take a lot of effort, but it is worth considering.

Pantheons in the real world also tend to face their own threats. The Greek gods have the titans, the Norse gods have to reckon with Ragnarok, and even the Hindu gods face the threat of the Asura.

When designing your pathenon, there needs to be a conscious choice between typical Iconic gods and the community of gods you tend to find in real-world religions.  If you opt for the former, it is worth asking yourself why it is iconic.  Why do they not change? My personal answer to this question is that they are eldritch beings of immense power, but unlike the old ones and elder gods of Lovecraft, they are deeply invested in the direction and well-being of humanity.

Monotheism

Monotheistic religions are particularly hard to implement in a fantasy setting, as they have to have a reason why people would reject the alternatives.  If clerics exist, who are powered by their faith in that god, then surely that is evidence that their religion has truth to it.

So if you want to implement a monotheistic religion, there needs to be a philosophical underpinning and a good narrative story for people to believe it.  One game that does this really well is Shadow of the Demon Lord, and its wannabe monotheistic religion, The New Faith.

The New Faith of Shadow of the Demon Lord

In a nutshell.  The prophet Astrid is visited by “the new god”.  A mysterious deity that gifts her with the four truths.

• The soul is eternal; death merely leads to the next life.

• The gods need the faith of mortals; without it, they are powerless.

• Through evil action and deed, the soul can be corrupted, which will doom them to hell.  Only through a moral life can a mortal escape this threat.

• Seeking a path to escape the cycle of death and rebirth, such as undeath, is an abomination.

She spends most of her life spreading these truths, but ultimately disappears, and there is debate as to what happened to her. But many feel that she either ascended to heaven or was martyred. 

Every aspect of Shadow of the Demon Lord’s cosmology is exceptional.  The New Faith is one shining example.  It works because:

• It is similar to real-world religions (Christianity in particular).

• It has a VERY clear set of beliefs that are internally consistent and make sense in the mythology of the setting.

• It has a protagonist prophet who follows a strong narrative path.  Revelation leads to enlightenment, which leads to preaching and persecution, which ends in martyrdom.

If you want to implement your own monotheism in your game, give it a clear philosophy and a good narrative.

Evil and Extremism

Sadly, you do not need evil gods for people to do evil things in the name of religion.  You just need people willing to interpret religious tenets in a way that brings about destructive behaviour.  Many years ago, I used to play a lot of LARP, which used an alignment system of Evil/Good, Chaotic/Lawful. As a result, you would get the phenomenon of what was dubbed as Fascist Good. A goodly character who brutally punishes and kills anyone committing an evil act, no matter how petty. These characters were morally inflexible and often scary to deal with.  What I mean is that even in the name of good, people can commit all kinds of horrors.

Consider the following:

• Followers of a god of law believe that any infraction should be brutally punished.  A paladin’s vows turn a member of the clergy into something akin to Judge from 2000AD.

• Followers of a god of freedom might see any form of authority as benevolent as tyranny; they espouse that society should live according to natural freedoms, in total anarchy.

• Followers of a god of nature might turn to regular human sacrifice.  The natural world is by definition red in tooth and claw, and life continues at the cost of others dying to give it the energy it needs to persist.

• Followers of a god of knowledge may forego ethics to achieve new breakthroughs. Human life is cheap compared to the devotional duties of one pushing the boundaries of knowledge for their god.

Conclusion

Adding religions to your games is a harder task than most because religion is such a ubiquitous part of culture.  However, because of its diversity, there are so many ways to sprinkle it into your games to add real flavour.  

Consider what your gods are.  Are they iconic? Do they have relationships with others? Are the gods under threat themselves from other beings?

Religious tenets will need some thought, especially if you create a monotheistic religion.

Are there extremists? How do they pervert the tenets of that religion?

I know this was not as practical-minded as previous entries in this series, but I hope my thoughts on this matter have been useful.

Tea-set

Creating a Campaign Part 4: Artefacts

 

Mysterious artefacts!

Introduction

Hello there, my lovelies,

Welcome back to what is the 4th instalment of my series on how I create a new campaign. In a nutshell, I try to create a sense of immersion for my players. I want them totally engaged and excited to play in the game world I have created.

Remember that every player is building a mental model of the world their character inhabits, and each player will have a mental model unique to them.  So instead of providing massive, in-depth descriptions, it is better to offer short, evocative statements that add one more bit of lore to the world so that your players can knit together all of these data points into a whole.

If you want to catch up and read the previous articles, you can find them in the links below:

Creating a Campaign Part 1: Creating Concepts

Creating a Campaign Part 2: Character Creation

Today, we are going full Dark Souls and investigating how we can leverage those ideas to create artefacts that add a whole load of flavour into our games. For clarity, when I talk about artefacts, I mean them quite generally. It could include magic items, arcane grimoires, or even steampunk knick-knacks. We can think of artefacts in this case as objects that either augment or enhance a character or their abilities.

The reason artefacts can add so much flavour to your world is that your players become attached to them. I think we can all think about a character who has a very personal bond with their beloved magical greatsword. So this is a great opportunity to give the player an item that feels like it was part of this world’s history and culture, and through it, they can feel linked to it.

Naming Artefacts

Obviously, this is a personal thing, and undoubtedly most people have their own process. I try to give artefacts short names that echo their theme. For example, if I had a fire-based artefact, I would use words in its name like ignite, flame, or conflagration.  

It is often the case that artefacts are retrieved from the ruins of long-lost civilisations, or from alien cultures.  When that is the case, I run the chosen name through a translator of ancient or dead languages to create a weird but cool title.  In the past, I have used Google Translate or the following sites to help name my artefacts.

Sanskrit: https://www.learnsanskrit.cc/translate?search=hello&dir=au

Latin: https://www.translate.com/latin-english

Norse: https://www.polytranslator.com/old-norse/?src=eng_Latn&tgt=non_Latn&q=%0A

Aztec: https://lingojam.com/Aztectranslator

Examples

Bani-Blot (Blood Axe): A throwing axe that returns to hand on command.

Tarangarakshakah (Wave guard): A trident that allows the wielder to walk on water.

Umbra Cultro (Shadow Knife): A dagger with an insubstantial blade that ignores armour.

Esteyaochiualistli (Blood Weapon): A large natural club with thorns, making its victims bleed out.

Evocative Descriptions

I believe that any artefact of note should be accompanied by a description. I do this by giving the player a card that acts as the physical representation of the item, and the item description is displayed front and centre (see below).

A typical item card from a campaign

The masters of item descriptions without a doubt are the Souls games. In general, these descriptions provide:

• A description of the items form, or its function.
• An extremely short but impactful sentence of lore associated with the item.

Let's have a look at a few examples from Elden Ring:

Exiles Hood

Sexy

(part of the exiles' armour set)

‘’Deep red hood that covers the whole head.

Worn by soldiers sent to the penal colonies, who were required to keep their faces hidden.’’

This description tells us that the knights are here because of a crime they, or their order, committed. Additionally, this crime is so bad or so shameful that they have to keep their faces hidden. It hints at a large event in the world of which they are a part.

The Briars of Punishment

not so sexy

(a sorcery collected from blinded cultists)

‘’An aberrant sorcery discovered by exiled criminals. Theirs are the sorceries most reviled by the academy.

Wounds the caster with thorns of punishment, sending a trail of bloodthorns running over the ground to impale enemies from below.

This sorcery can be cast repeatedly.

The guilty, their eyes gouged by thorns, lived in eternal darkness. There, they discovered the blood star.’’

This unsettling description hints at cosmic horror.  That these criminals, who have been punished by having their eyes scourged out of their heads by thorns, have been able to witness the Blood Star. Something no sighted person could ever see, and this thing has gifted them with blood magic.

That is powerful and evocative world-building.

The following two examples are from important artefacts from my own campaigns. The first is from a campaign of Shadow of the Demon Lord. This weapon was found in the hide of a great demon, and it was designed to hint at the true scale of the threat the shadow of the Demon Lord posed to the world.

Fearsome Bloom

“This weapon is the final remnant of a lost people from an extinct universe.

It appears as a brilliant magenta flower, in the shape of a crescent axe.

Its handle is covered in fearsome thorns upon which a careless user could prick their hands.”

The second item is from my Webrail campaign, and it is designed to reinforce the train and spider aesthetics of the setting.

Resonance: Silk steel battle wrench

“This oversized wrench has the familiar blue tint of a silk steel.

When struck on a solid surface, the wrench sings with a rich metallic hum.”

In Conclusion

Use naming conventions that echo the theme of your artefact, and there is always the option to put that name through a translator.

More importantly, your artefacts should have descriptions. Focus on short pieces of flavour text that include a piece of lore, and the player will then weave that information into their mental model of your game world.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. Next time, the one thing that should never be discussed over dinner, religion.

Ta-ra!

Love Tea Set

Creating a campaign part 1: Developing the setting

Introduction

Alternatively, see this video

Hello there, my lovelies. In this series of posts, I am going outline my process of creating a campaign. From the outset, I believe the most important thing for any campaign is immersion. Once you get your players excited about the setting you created, they will actively engage with the shared world-building and storytelling experience that is a role-playing game.

Just a few points before we continue. The GM ultimately has the most control over the creation of the setting and campaign, but it is only through the players' input that details will deepen, and themes can be discovered in your setting that you didn’t realise were there.

Immersion is a matter of adding details that hint at a much larger world.  You don’t need to fill in every last blank, just hint at it and let the player's imagination do the rest. The Souls games do this admirably. Every item in the world contains a terse piece of flavour text that hints at a person, place or event, and by piecing together these disparate pieces of lore, a greater narrative emerges.

Awww jellyfish

Over this series, we will look at how we can inject world-building into the following:

• Shops and other vendors
• Creating a world map
• Religions
• Arefacts
• Beastiery
• Antagonists
• Secrets

Today, we will be looking at first principles. How to build the foundations of a new setting and how to pitch it to your players to generate engagement and excitement.

High-Concept Ideas

We want to create a setting idea that grabs our players’ attention.  It must generate a powerful mental image in our players’ minds and stimulate their curiosity enough that they have a bunch of questions that they desperately need answered. Across different media, several settings do this really well. Examples include:

The Underdark: A vast cavernous realm full of forgotten places, horrendous abominations, and civilisations that plot against the surface dwellers.

Blame!: All of humanity once lived in a vast city.  Aeons later, it is an empty superstructure. The few surviving humans are hunted to near extinction by a corrupted security system.

Trench Crusade: It is World War I, but this time the combined forces of the Abrahamic religions fight against the hordes of hell.

The Matrix: Life as you know it is a computer simulation; in reality, you are a battery for sentient machines.

Jurassic Park: Scientists bring dinosaurs back from extinction and make a theme park.  It goes horribly wrong.

Each of the above can be described as High-Concept settings.  A high-concept is an idea that can be described concisely, but still engages the potential audience.  The best example of this is Alien, which was originally pitched as “Jaws in space”. So, presenting your setting as a high-concept setting is probably one of the best ways to get your players excited about the upcoming campaign.

Generating High-Concept Ideas

The following method is a distillation of my mental process when developing a new setting. The reality is that regardless of your idea, it will take considerable thinking time to work out the kinks and inconsistencies.

1. Write down several ideas that you think would be cool to have in your setting. They could be films, books, games, a type of environment, a scientific concept, or even just a colour you like.
2. Select 2 to 3 of these ideas.
3. Generate a set of questions to link them together.
4. Write answers to these questions, and an idea will emerge.

Webrail Example

(The most recent campaign I am running.)

Stage 1:

Inspirations are.

• Floating islands in space
• Snowpeircer
• Forests
• Terminator
• Spiders
• Godzilla

Stage 2:

We will select.

• Floating islands in space
• Snowpeircer
• Spiders

Stage 3:

Our questions are.

• People live in city-sized trains.  How do they travel from island to island?
• Spiders? What makes them so important? Are they PC races? Are they antagonists?
• What are these islands floating in? Space? What lies below?

Stage 4:

Let's answer these questions.

• The islands are linked by a rail system built upon a vast, indestructible spider web. Made by gigantic spiders, obviously.
• The spiders built the foundations for the rail system.  Therefore, they are seen as architects, builders, maybe even worshipped as gods?  For once, they are not the bad guys.
• Every island should be its own environment. Separate and unique, like a planet.  Therefore, it makes sense that it is floating in space, or something similar. Dark and empty.

The High Concept

''In the endless and starless abyss, a million fragments of lost worlds are scattered.  They would be isolated and alone if not for the Webrail.  A vast rail network linking them together, created by great godlike spiders. Train-cities travel the Webrail for trade, exploration and conquest.''

This is our basic high concept that we can build out from.  Now we have this core concept, as we delve into other aspects of world-building, this central idea will guide and inform us as we move forward to create something truly immersive.

Next Week, Character creation